Everybody Laughs When Dr. Leo Spaceman Says it About Science….

But they intone it with solemn Leftist piety like a Church hymn when progressives say exactly the same thing about marriage.

News flash: Marriage is not “whatever we want it to be”. When you redefine marriage to mean whatever you want it to mean, that is the same thing as saying marriage means nothing.

Gay “marriage” will not, in the end, accomplish anything but finishing the destruction of marriage begun by heterosexual no fault divorce. Marriage exists, not to affirm narcissists in their sense of being celebrated for whatever they happen to feel today, but so that families–and particularly children, the most vulnerable–will be privileged and protected as they need to be.

Washington State: Reject R-74. Marriage is between one man and one woman. Preserve Marriage. And if you haven’t registered to vote, do it now.

Another example of the incoherent asininity of the Progressive worldview: Marriage has no intrinsic meaning or reality whatsoever, but somehow everyone has an intrinsic right to it.

A Philosopher

Marriage exists … so that families–and particularly children, the most vulnerable–will be privileged and protected as they need to be.

Well said. This is exactly why I am a supporter of the legalization of same-sex marriage.

B.E. Ward

So does that mean you’ll be a supporter of the legalization of plural marriages when that comes around?

A Philosopher

Well, it certainly doesn’t follow from what I said. It’s now an empirical question – do plural marriages do a good job of playing the role of protecting families and children? I’m initially inclined to be somewhat skeptical that they do, but I’m open to being persuaded otherwise by good evidence.

B.E. Ward

So if there was ‘good evidence’ by your standard of judgment, then plural marriages should be legalized?

A Philosopher

Yes.

(A bit more carefully: it’s not, of course, that I think my own evidential standards should govern public policy. But my own evidential standards do govern what public policy I will support.)

B.E. Ward

So the only things that should be disallowed (or, at least, discouraged legally) are those for which there are ‘evidential standards’ that show it causing, what exactly? Harm? The lack of warm and fuzzy feelings? More harm than good by some arbitrary measure?

A Philosopher

I’m not attempting to give some sort of general principle for what should be legally permitted or forbidden. I’m just accepting Mark’s claim that marriage, in particular, should be legally protected because of its role in protecting the most vulnerable in society. There’s then an empirical question about whether that claim extends to an argument in favor of plural marriage; I’m expressing ignorance on the data on that question.

Bill

I know we conservatives commit the slippery slope fallacy a lot, but I think there’s definite merit here.

consent as the sole criterion of the good, to quote Mark, will invariably led to plural marriage, incest et. al

I don’t see how it couldn’t?

A Philosopher

But I’m not using consent as the criterion of the good. I’m using Mark’s criterion.

Ted Seeber

I still don’t understand how same sex marriage can provide a child of parents of both genders- and that’s part of what EVERY child is privileged to deserve.

A Philosopher

I don’t see why we should place special importance on children having parents of both genders. Maybe there are some goods that come from parents of both genders, but there are also goods that come from having parents of the same faith, parents of different faiths, parents of different academic specialization, parents of different race, parents of different literary taste, and so on. I don’t want to enforce any of those distributions (and, of course, it would be clearly inconsistent to try to enforce them all).

B.E. Ward

It could be because the child wouldn’t exist without parents of both genders, which is substantially different than every other iteration you put forth.

A Philosopher

Could be. But I don’t see any good reason to accept the general principle that if A is a necessary condition for the existence of B, then B has a right to the presence of A.

(In fact, counterexamples abound. No child without a pregnant mother, but it just doesn’t follow that there’s special reason to make sure each child is raised by a pregnant mother.)

BobRN

Your example is so broad as to be meaningless. The question is not whether a child benefits by being raised by any pregnant mother, but whether he benefits being raised by his mother. No child without his mother being pregnant with him.

The research is overwhelming that children benefit when they are raised by their biological mother and father who are married to each other. To suggest that a child benefits no more from being raised by his mother and father than being raised by one parent who favors Hemingway and another who favors O’Connor is ridiculous. It is a denial of reality in favor of a social agenda, and a dangerous one at that, and a parody of the family as the bedrock of society. At the very least, you could grant the matter the seriousness it merits.

The research on homosexual relationships is copious and almost unanimously troubling. Higher rates of depression, infidelity, promiscuity, suicide, domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse. Were a child trapped in a heterosexual family suffering such, society would be doing everything it could to get him out. But, those who claim to know better are eager to drop children into this scenario, not because it is best for the children, but because it suits the social agenda of those in power.

It seems to be a bad argument. Was my grandfather entitled to his mother, who died in childbirth? Is a posthumous child entitled to the father she never knew? “Entitled” seems to be a bad word for the dseired rhetorical end. This says nothing in favor of the counter-argument; it is just weak and poor rhetoric.

http://ohnimus.wordpress.com Christian Ohnimus

Well, we’re all entitled to to a right to life but some people die before they’re even born. We all have a right to property but some people go their whole lives without owning anything. Natural circumstances often make for a reality that is less than ideal as do people’s bad decision-making. Gay marriage violates a child’s right to a mother and a father but that doesn’t mean that a traditional marriage cannot violate a child’s rights either if the parents are abusive or neglectful, for example. The correct response, however, isn’t to embrace gay marriage but to oppose abuse and neglect as well,

http://attheturnofthetide.blogspot.com Caspar

That video’s actually pretty bad. “God is the author of marriage in virtually every culture”? He glides right over polygamy there at the start, which will weaken his argument with proponents of gay marriage who are biblically literate. And the call to preserve Biblical marriage in the state of Washington–I understand this is meant for pastors, but that’s not going to help us with any secular person or most Americans who would rather the nation not pass into law strictly Christian teaching.

Give me Archbishop Sartain’s video and the letter from the bishops instead.

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